Neighborhood Playdate and a hike!

Ruth is just so cool. I'm going to pack her up and ship her back to Tucson when we move back. She says she is going to persuade us to stay. :) I bet I win!

She put this whole thing together and invited the entire neighborhood to come play and meet the new neighbors, and kids.

We started out with a potluck brunch and it was outstanding. So many delicious foods were brought and I was so hungry! Very hard to behave myself on WW, but I did it! We brought over pumpkin muffins and the stuff to make an iced vanilla chai tea that is to die for! (I'll post the recipe for that later).

Here is the spread.



And here are some of the kids enjoying it!




The moms all got to know each other inside (it was chilly, only about 50*F outside in the a.m.) and the kids played and played outside. They didn't mind at all.





We made up a neighborhood directory too and then Ruth is going to type it all up. After we ate, had tea and coffee and cleaned up a little we took the kids hiking. I never did a headcount of the mob of children this morning, but you'll see in the pics there were a lot!






We hiked down by the Des Plaines and there is lots of Beaver activity down there. We didn't see any beavers, (I can only imagine they were slightly horrified by our large number of rowdy kids and were hiding) but we saw lots of signs of them, the kids were thrilled!





Catching bugs was a part of the day too. Evan caught a grasshopper right at the start of the hike, then was very jealous of the green worm some of the girls caught later in the hike.




Then we managed to get a group shot on a tree that the beavers had knocked over but not taken yet, the kids loved that idea.




We also found a vine to swing on, and then I just added some additional photos for fun. Thanks for reading about our fun day!









Do you see all the leaves on the ground?


Well look at how many are still on the trees! Isn't that crazy?